Robert Stein (1950)

Robert Stein (1972)

Robert Stein (2000s)

About Me

editor, publisher, media critic and journalism teacher,
is a former Chairman of the American Society of Magazine Editors, and author of “Media Power: Who Is Shaping Your Picture of the World?” Before the war in Iraq, he wrote in The New York Times: “I see a generation gap in the debate over going to war in Iraq. Those of us who fought in World War II know there was no instant or easy glory in being part of 'The Greatest Generation,' just as we knew in the 1990s that stock-market booms don’t last forever.
We don’t have all the answers, but we want to spare our children and grandchildren from being slaughtered by politicians with a video-game mentality."
This is not meant to extol geezer wisdom but suggest that, even in our age of 24/7 hot flashes, something can be said for perspective.
The Web is a wide space for spreading news, but it can also be a deep well of collective memory to help us understand today’s world. In olden days, tribes kept village elders around to remind them with which foot to begin the ritual dance. Start the music.

Like “Dr.” Harold Hill, who sold band instruments and uniforms without knowing how to read music, Cain is dazzling even stubborn Iowans with his 9-9-9 version of “76 Trombones.”

Alongside him, “inevitable candidate” Romney is looking like Willie Loman dragging sample cases through the territories, hoping his faith in a shoeshine and a smile will see him through.

What we have here is a weird political fever dream that scrambles American stereotypes into a new kind of stew.

Romney keeps telling voters about the good old ways of doing business while Cain, whose chief economic adviser turns out to be a small-town Wells Fargo stockbroker, just keeps smiling and tap-dancing toward an office that would put his finger on the nuclear button.

Meanwhile offstage Barack Obama is gearing up and rehearsing for his repeat performance, hoping to remind audiences that how the hills were alive with “The Sound of Music” only three years ago.

How will all this song-and-dance end?

Update: Like the old Broadway shows, opening night performances are stacked with friends, backers and supporters to laugh and cheer, but the debates have gone them a step further by keeping critics out of the seats completely to watch on TV.

We learn now that “the press often remembers the debates less by what was said, and more by where they were put and what they were fed.”